holding a candle

I have an idea that I may or may not be able to achieve... to make an edible candle.  True, there are edible candles in the sense that you can technically eat them (i. e. soy wax), but I want to make a candle that the diner will want to eat, not just have the ability to digest.  To my knowledge, this has never been done before (I'm sure I will be corrected if I'm wrong).

The first seed of this idea was born before chadzilla (the blog, not me!).  We were doing a dinner for the Chaine des Rotisseurs and the main course was lamb.  Being the Chaine, the courses were kept within the borders of traditional flavors... but where to take it from there.  We had the idea (and were able to successfully pull off) a candle made of rosemary mint butter that was lit and served on the plate.  As the wick burned down, it melted the butter into... let's say a 'sauce.'  The plan was to instruct the diners to either dip there morsels of lamb into the flavored butter, or simply pour it onto the meat.  Although we used votive glass holders, it is definitely possible to use a candle mold to create a free-standing candle that would melt onto the plate.  Everything worked out great, the Chaine was impressed (they later voted our dinner 'Best Meal of the Year'), and we all patted ourselves on the back.

Fast forward... present day.

Although the butter candle is interesting on its own, I am still haunted by the idea of creating a candle made from a water-based gel (at this point the gel can be of any flavor within the realm of infusing into a liquid) that would 'melt' into a sauce as the candle burned.

I tried an experiment with 5 different gelling agents (given that they all produce unique textures and have different melting and gelling points).  Sounds good on the surface, but they all just fizzled out when the flame neared the gel.

Is it because the gels are in fact, water based... and fire doesn't like water?  There is water in butter, but also a high amount of fat.  Wax is a lipid (in case you were wondering what in the hell wax is in relation to cooking).  It is sometimes used to smooth out chocolate or coat cheeses.  The simplest forms of wax are actually methane and then octane.  The solid waxes we are familiar with are more complex and take the solid form we all know.  There is also something called gel wax (which sounds like the right road to take here), but it is made from a mixture of wax and mineral oil... still not appetizing when you think about it.  Is there any combination or amount of gel that would work here... a gel mixed with an oil?

If it weren't for the fact that the butter candle actually worked, I would abandon the idea.  Does the candle have to be limited to fats alone (there were also milk solids, water, and flavoring herbs in the mix).  If so, I have some nice snowy white Berkshire fat sitting in the walk-in.  Great possibility, but how would a guest react to having a shot glass of melting lard on their plate?

Where to go next?  Any suggestions?

Comments

[Simon]

Your issue here is fuel. When a candle melts, it produces enough fuel to make the candle not fizzle out, the same thing can be said of the butter, your fat content in the butter becomes your fuel for your flame. So if you want to make a water-based gel that will not fizzle out you will need to add some fuel to it, the easier being fat. In theory, if you can make your gel filled with pockets of fat, it would normally rise to the top and become your fuel, and still melt the rest of your water-based gel melt under it. The devil is in the proportions, which I have no idea what it could be. I doubt that a full emulsion would work though, although I could be wrong...

[Harlan]

Hm. Candles work because the wax melts and wicks up the wick via capilary action, where it then burns. Any water would need to evaporate off before it wicks up and smothers the flame. I don't think an alcohol-based solution would work very well, as alcohol would evaporate before the water, not after it. So you're stuck with a mixture of an oil and a little water, like the butter you did before. If you use an oil that's solid at room temperature, you can do what you've done. You could try to emulsify a sauce that's 75-25 fat:water, gel it, and see if that works. Could you emulsify and gel an oil-heavy vinaigrette, maybe, and use that? You could use a concentrated vinegar to get the flavor with less water, maybe.

Interesting problem! And you haven't even mentioned the bits of cotton ash in your sauce!

[headnandneck]

Fats, waxes and oils are all types of lipids, catagorised by the temperature at which they become liquid.

In the case of wax, as the wick burns it melts the fat below it and draws it up towards the flame, allowing the flame to carry on burning. This is why the butter candle worked too. As butter is a lipid it is hydrophobic and so doesn't mix with water - again - this is why the butter candle burned.

Unfortunately, you've got to be careful what you use for your wick - you don't want the burning of the wick to cause any bad flavours/chemicals.

Also, candles are a fairly inefficient method of burning, and as a result there is alot of incomplete combustion. For example, hold a plate over the flame of a burning candle and soon the plate will be covered in soot. This is carbon which hasn't bee burned properly due to a lack of oxygen reaching the flame. If you leave a candle burning long enough the black soot collects in the pool surrounding the bottom of the flame - something which again could harm the flavour/customer

With the hydrocolloids you are using to set the candle, you also have to make sure that they're safe for consumption once they are burned.

Why not try using tapioca maltodextrin to make a 'dry' candle from a particular fat. The resulting powder could be compressed and may melt properly when exposed to heat.
http://www.playingwithfireandwater.com/foodplay/2008/04/powders.html

Alternatively, alcohol burns, so maybe try making a candle out of a hydrocolloid and a strong-ish alcohol - although - that might be a bit too flammable

[heartsurgeon]

Fascinating idea...i really liked the idea of the sauce being created before your eyes...but having dealt with lawyers (long story), i can assure you that having diners pouring a flammable liquid with a flame, would terrify the lawyers representing the restaurant, and delight plantiff's lawyer's (when a tipsy patron pours the flammable stuff on themselves).

All that said, i look forward to reading about your creations!

[Nathan]

From what I can remember from highschool chem and digging around on the internet, what's going on in the reaction of a candle is that your initial match is igniting the fuel that is infused in the wick. The combustion releases significant heat which melts the solid-state fuel in the candle, which then travels up the wick and there is a separation process in which hydrogen is burned in one part of the flame and carbon (released from CO2) is burned in another part of the flame (this is why a candle flame is multi-colored).

In your experiment, it sounds like you aren't providing enough or the right kind of solid-state fuel to continue the recurring thermal reaction. Water (H2O) doesn't burn because of extremely strong hydrogen bonds. Butter, on the other hand, burned because of the glycerol that is vaporized and ignited at the fire point (I might be off the mark with that one...I haven't looked into the structure of butter fat specifically). Anyways, what matters to your project is creating a sustainable solid-state fuel source to continue your thermal reaction. This fuel might be completely separate from the actual "sauce". I'd bet that the rosemary-butter sauce for the lamb was a mixture of rosemary oil and certain butter fats that don't break down as quickly as others (so while one set of fats was burning, the others were just liquefying and mixing).

As for whether or not your different gels specifically are ignitable, that's something I've never thought of/looked into...though now I'm really intrigued.

And recalled that for centuries candles were made out of tallow, refined beef fat. Refined pork fat is just lard and will do basically the same thing.

This is a really interesting read if you can stomach the language: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14474

[sygyzy]

How was your original butter candle made? Did you literally stick a wick (wax covered or bare?) into a cylinder of butter?

[Jim]

What about ethanol?

[Jim]

Problem is, unless segregated (or a small percentage), the water component of a sauce will put out the flame. Ethanol burns and is water-compatible, but I doubt you want your sauce to be almost pure alcohol, and you're likely to have the whole thing set on fire as opposed to just the wick.

Maybe try using another lipid like olive oil. It's liquid at room temperature, so maybe you could either 1) cool it until it solidified and allow the flame and ambient temperature to liquefy it at the table or 2) make something like an olive oil mousse/mayo and see if making that into a candle would allow it to melt.

One thing you'd have to watch out for, though, is oxidation and burnt flavor-- olive oil is sensitive. If that doesn't do well maybe try something with a higher smoke point or use a lighter olive oil (i.e. non-virgin).

[Jim]

Hmm... just thought of something. I'm not sure how to do it, but if you could hydrogenate the oil then it would solidify at room temp.

Also, cocoa butter is solid at room temperature and has a high smoke point. Maybe try that...

[Chicken Fried Gourmet]

this is so cool, what a visionairy(sp?) I cannot wait to see the results :)

[Ilex]

For a candle to burn, you definitely need a lipid to burn, be it a wax, fat or oil (all pretty much the same thing, chemically speaking). There's no reason you couldn't gel a flavoured sauce and get it to burn as long as it had a high fat concentration (80% or more, butter is roughly 85% lipids), but there might be another way.

Given you don't need the candle to burn for hours, what you could do is get your wick, and make a slender dip-candle from, say, lard or butter (something solid at room temperature) by dipping the wick into the melted fat, then chilled water, back into the fat, etc. until you've built up a sufficiently thick layer. Then mount this edible candle in the centre of a second gelled sauce so that as the candle burns and the fat melts the two flavours can combine. Maybe integrate a flavoured oil into the candle (rosemary, thyme, truffle)? It'd definitely need some experimentation, but would overcome the need to have a really oil based sauce for the entire candle.

[Chris]

Do you think a foie gras candle would work? Or just a foie fat candle?

[Martin]

If we disregard edibility, I would try ethanol (>50% ethanol) together with agar. Agar forms a gel with pretty large pores, so perhaps a wick would be able to suck out som ethanol. However, even though agar is heat stable I doubt that it would survive for long once the flame comes close to the surface. There is a chance that the whole thing will startburning, but I guess if you get the water/ethanol mix right, the solid agar will not burn.

[chris]

I'm skipping to the bottom since i've been out of the loop for the last two weeks with the impending beard dinner. I don't know if anyone threw this out there or not but what about the use of alcohol in your candle? How about an au poivre candle? Cracked pepper, brunoise shallot, cognac, a gelled cream? Or soakng the wick in alcohol? This could help keep the flame going, possibly.